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Camps set up for Afghan refugees©Associated Press
© St. Petersburg Times, QUETTA, Pakistan -- Pakistan is shipping some illegal Afghan refugees back across the border to tent villages being set up by the Taliban just inside Afghanistan, the Pakistani government said Tuesday. Shafi Kakar, a government official in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan, said an agreement was reached Monday with Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to accept the refugees' return. Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammed Khan confirmed the arrangement. "The Taliban will keep refugees away from the borders, and they have agreed to set up two refugee camps inside Afghanistan," Kakar said. Khan said the agreement represents "some understanding with the Taliban local authorities." One of the camps inside Afghanistan will be built in Spinboldak, about 15 miles from the border, Kakar said. A second will be set up about 2 miles from the border. Pakistan allowed more than 5,000 Afghans to enter in recent days but has again ordered its crossings sealed. Up to 15,000 Afghans are reported to be camped out in a no man's land near the Chaman border crossing outside Quetta, jostling to enter Pakistan. Most have fled the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the Taliban headquarters city and the site of hard-hitting U.S. strikes. Officials with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva said they have also prepared a "temporary staging site" just inside Pakistan for about 1,000 of the neediest refugees. One refugee at that site Tuesday was 9-year-old Zabih Ullah, who held his 9-month-old brother. He said his mother was across the border in Afghanistan, barred by border guards from entering. "I am taking care of my brother. But . . . I can't feed him. I will go back to join my mother," he said, and he soon did just that. Although estimates vary wildly, thousands of refugees have been streaming toward Pakistan's border with Afghanistan since U.S. airstrikes began Oct. 7. Peter Kessler, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said in Islamabad that emergency supplies were given last weekend to Pakistani authorities to use "if necessary" within the narrow no man's land along the border. The supplies, including biscuits and tents, ended up being sent "deeper into the territory" as part of the Pakistani agreement with the Taliban, Kessler said. The United Nations is not involved in setting up camps inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Afghan refugees who are holding valid documents for entry into Pakistan will be permitted to stay, Pakistani officials said. But Khan said such people are "very few." He said his government is accepting injured and elderly refugees and unaccompanied women and children. "Our point of view has always been that we must establish camps across the border in Afghanistan and all assistance to the refugees must be given there, so that people go back to Afghanistan instead of making them comfortable here in Pakistan," President Pervez Musharraf said Tuesday.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
